Egypt Cemetery by Michael Hendrick

 Dearest Readers,

It seems like all we do on this page anymore is to apologize for not keeping up to date and blogging as usual, like last year. We have even gotten a warning from Amazon.com that if we do not post another blog, we shall no longer be published on the Kindle page there, so let us explain.

The novel, Egypt Cemetery, is a trip through the childhood of Michael Hendricks (yes, Hendricks), as seen by the author, as far back into the 1950s as he can recollect and taking him up to the sad year of 1971, by which time JFK, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, along with the ‘hippie scene,’ were all dead.

It is a story, it is a purging of the soul, it is what kids did back when kids were allowed to be kids and grown-ups were still allowed to yell at strange kids whenever they saw them up to something wrong.

Today, if you yell at a strange kid for riding his bike into traffic and nearly killing himself without realizing it, it is as good as starting a Third World War. Parents do not care if the kids are safe. They just do not want you to yell at them.

When we were kids, we got yelled at everyplace we went. Sometimes we got chased. Somebody was always after us, one way or the other. We did other things back then, besides get yelled at, that the youth of today will never have the opportunity to experience…like making crank phone calls. The closest you can get to that today is watching Bart Simpson make a fool out of Moe over the phone at Moe’s Bar on The Simpsons.

Nobody asks if you have Prince Albert in a can anymore, of if your refrigerator is running. All the fun has been stymied in the wake of caller ID. There is no more fun anonymity. There is no more good music on the AM radio. Monsters are no longer scary.

Today, a big issue is bullying. When we were kids, it was a free for all, as to who could heap the worst insult onto the next kid. If you got insulted, you shot back. We actually used to purchase ‘insult cards’ at the price of 25 insults for a dime. They were the size of business cards and said things like, “Get rid of 20 pounds of ugly fat…cut off your head!”…of “Its nice to see your back…especially after seeing your face.”

There was a whole industry devoted to helping us insult each other. Another good one was to take the theme song from a currently-popular television show and insert the name of your victim into it, while adding assorted rhyming jibes to the tune of the ditty. Or take the case of the poor unfortunates who were marked from the start just by the spelling of their last names…like Randy Nipples, who was doomed to a life of saying, “It is ‘Nip-PELS!” Sure we had our fun with his name but we played together, too.

The message is that childhood has changed. It is not as much fun…or it does not look it, anyway. In many ways, we are glad to be considered ‘old’, since the new world is not as much fun as the old one. In Egypt Cemetery, the author tries to present those innocent days of youth, before everything had a double meaning and things were what they appeared to be. It is not exotic, it is not earth shattering, it is not politically correct…it is the way it was before the internet robbed us of everything from regional dialects to colloquialisms to regional pride. We are all one big country now. We are all starting to sound the same. In the sixties, you could tell where a person came from as soon as they spoke. Not any more…even the charming and warm southern accent is fading, and that is a shame.

The cemetery pictured above is actually the cover photo for the book, taken by the author in County Tipperary, Ireland. His love of cemeteries began at with the Egypt Cemetery in Podunk, Pennsylvania.

Mr. Hendrick is an integral part of the writing staff here at CFYSA and we look forward to his return in July, or maybe even in June, once he has finished all the editing and writing of the novel. If you are hungry for some new work from him, you can get a copy of Beatdom Issue 11 ~ The Nature Issue. You can enjoy the front cover he conceived of Arthur Rimbaud (painstakingly drawn by the back-from-the-dead fingers of illustrator Waylon Bacon) or look at the tables of contents, which he photographed at two places which are very dear to him, his local library and the raptor sanctuary, where he has been a volunteer for fourteen years.

On the back cover, you can see the cover of Egypt Cemetery, as it will be published, and inside you can read interviews he conducted with Beat writer Ann Charters, country music legend Hank3 and punk rocker Richie Ramone, who was the fastest drummer in the fastest of the original punk bands. He also recently conducted an interview with punk icon Patti Smith, which will appear in Issue Number Twelve of Beatdom…The Crime Issue. Part of that interview is posted on www.beatdom.com .

So hold onto your hats and the fun will begin again soon enough. We just need Michael here to inspire us with some of his insane views that somehow seem to make sense in an insane world. He is almost done with the hard work and misses his readers very much.

He says we should say, “Hello!”

Bob Dylan, Sony and the Supper Club- Set Your Chickens Free!!!!

Dearest Readers,

We crawl out of our hole to post again, it being closer to Spring and we having things on our mind.

Thank you for your repeated visits over the past months and keeping this blog going with your reading. We have been involved in setting up a new online book and vinyl shop, called The Used Beat Book Shop and it is online at http://www.usedbeatshop.com , although it is still under construction in the capable hands of the folks at SONA (not Sony) Entertainment.

You can click on the url to see about that one…but today we want to chat about chicks…chickens, that is and why they should be set free. It is all allegorical and not a reality, as it would appear in real life as shown in the cartoon here by Gilbert Shelton, writer and artist of such wonderful comix as The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and his work in Zap, Rip-Off and other higher-grade underground comix. They are, ahem, available at The Used Beat Book Shop and will be online with prices attached one day very soon. Keep looking!

Anyway, Bob Dylan and Sony have chickens they ought to release in the form of the Supper Club tapes, two nights of live performances in the NYC venue by Dylan in November 1993. These are excellent performances of many songs which have become staples to Dylan fans and have never been heard in live or alternate takes. In some cases these live versions are more touching than the originally-released recordings.

Many of them have been popping up on Youtube and then taken down by the record company after a few days. It would be nice to have a copy of the songs on a cd, perhaps as the next volume in the official Bootleg Series, but fact is the performances were professionally filmed and recorded and would be a wonderful treat for fans around the world!

To this end, a Facebook group has formed to push a petition, the page is called Petition To Convince Sony & Bob Dylan to Release the Supper Club Tapes. It is gaining ground with more people signing the petition every day. They need you to sign. You need to sign, if you would like to have these great performances available to you and not ‘here today and yanked from the web tomorrow’, as has been happening with them.

A lot of excellent songs and new versions of the standards are found here, like Tight Connection To My Heart, Ring Them Bells, Jack-A-Roe, Ragged and Dirty, Blood In My Eyes and others.

It does not take much to sign the petition, just go to FaceBook and copy the name of the group from this blog onto the search bar and, Hey! Presto!, there it is. It is that easy, so please do it and we can all have these to play in our cars or watch on our screens at some time in the near future.

Again, we thank you for supporting this blog. We thank you for checking in every day, all those of you who know who you are, whether for kind or nefarious purposes - we welcome you all!

The Used Beat Book Shop will be up and running soon…we have so much inventory it is a monumental task just to scan it all and figure the proper price. You can sell stuff there, too, and if you look at the site you will notice that details about that are shown near the bottom of the page. There will be no fee or charges. It is a community service to an underground community. www.usedbeatshop.com

In the meantime, we are plugging away on the next issue of Beatdom. This issue, your humble narrator has managed to get interviews with Ann Charters, noted Beat Historian, and Hank3, the grandson of Hank Williams (arguably the father of country music and, according to Hank3, maybe the father of rock and roll). For details on that, see www.beatdom.com

Allow us to entertain you with one of the songs from the Supper Club tapes. This is a great version of Tight Connection To My Heart, a song that a lot of people write off but which is a favorite of true Dylan fans around the world.

Oh, and another reason we have been so scarce is that we are hard at work on our novel, Egypt Cemetery, which will be  released by Beatdom Books in Spring, so please keep your eyes open for that, too! Once that is done, we will show some excerpts and get back to more regular blogging…we have just had SO much work to do that we are happy to have busy hands but we can only write so much and the blog takes a lot of energy, since it is so damned good!

Repost From Beatdom Regarding Kitty Bruce on Lenny

 

Gentle Readers,

We have been busy and posting on the Beatdom site. We thought we should share this!

 

Posted by michaelhendrick in Beat News on December 8, 2011 4:10 pm / no comments

In November, Kitty Bruce, daughter and only survivor of comedy icon/legend Lenny Bruce, was gracious enough to talk to Beatdom about her father’s distain for organized religion, as evidenced in a number of his comedy routines, life at home and Lenny’s House, the twelve step rehab for women in NorthEast Pennsylvania which she started in memory of her father. Kitty tells us about her father’s, and her own, childhood in the new Beatdom Issue 10, The Religion Issue, on sale soon.

Was Lenny a Beat?

He was called that by police and press. Allen Ginsberg organized the “Emergency Committee Against the Harrassment of Lenny Bruce” during the 1964 Cafe Au Go Go trial in New York City. Queried on the connection between Lenny and the Beats, Kitty said, ”I’m very familiar with Allen, I knew Allen…if the question is, did my father sit around coffee houses and snap his fingers?…probably…haha..”

Many reached out to help Lenny when the law was out to kill him (Vincent Cuccia, one of the New York D.A.’s who prosecuted Bruce’s last obscenity case, said, “We drove him into poverty and bankruptcy and then murdered him. We all knew what we were doing. We used the law to kill him.”) and Kitty reaches back out to help women by providing a safe, sober and nurturing environment , providing support, education and other tools necessary to stay clean and sober.

 You can honor the memory of Lenny Bruce by donating to The Lenny Bruce Memorial Foundation, PO Box 1089, Pittston, PA 18640. Many of Lenny’s prized possessions and memorabilia are up for sale, for those who would like to help Lenny’s House and also own a priceless item such as the typewriter Lenny used or his famously-photographed trenchcoat! Send inquiries to the address above.

Beatdom Issue 10, The Religion Issue, is coming your way in a few days. Read what Kitty Bruce has to say, along with many other fascinating writers and great work by our excellent artists!!!

Beatdom is available at http://www.beatdom.com and http://www.amazon.com and http://www.kindle.com and www.usedbeatshop.com

Drill, Baby, Drill!

     Dear Friends, Foes, Freaks and Fuzzies,

     It looks as though some progress is being made on the domestic oil front, with the 4/8/11 ‘rig and drill report’ noting that Hercules Offshore Drilling, an american company in the gulf, has been granted two drill permits.  Hercules will be drilling for oil monster Chevron, but at least we are seeing a gulf-based company get some long-awaited business.

     CFYSA has set up a charitable trust, which includes american oil company stocks in it’s portfolio.  It also has solar power, wind power and water desalinization companies, as well as a uranium mining company.  We believe in covering all corners.

     Having actively attended the very first Earth Day in 1970, we are very much aware of the implications of using oil.  We know it is not a good thing and that alternative sources must be found.  Five years ago, scientists said we had five years to get the carbon emissions issues in order before we hit the tipping point.  Well, looky-look, because we are now at the tipping point and have still done nothing.  Some people believe that their elected officials have an eye on this and will not allow constituents to die of pure pollution, like those people in NYC back in the 60s.  Good luck on that!

     We all know that solar, wind and nuclear energies are the best ways to get us off of the petrol diet.  What many people do not seem to grasp is that major change often reaches the transition step by step.  We cannot simply stop using oil and switch to solar and wind, or even nuclear energy.  Grids need to be set up, infrastructure put in place and lobbyists fom the alternative energy companies need to find elected officials they can pay off to vote for their products.

     We see how we are bound by foreign oil…or do we?  Is it the oil or our appetites?  In the first decade of this century, everybody from Tony Soprano to your grandma drove an SUV.  We worked in offices at the time and three quarters of the people drove trucks or SUVs and had no reason to do so, aside from the fact that it was cheap and easy to get a car loan.  Who is willing to cut their own consumption?

     Maybe a ban on gas-powered recreational vehicles, like ATVs, jetskis, outboard and inboard motorboats and mini-bikes would chip away at the total of consumed fuel.  It would be nice to include motorcycles but some people do use them to get to work and school, so that is a bit harder to do.  You have to wonder about the brain of a person who gets thier biggest thrill from burning gasoline noisily.  It is one thing if you are under 16 because children do need to play but why not find a form of recreation that does not consume fossil fuel or make a hell of a racket?  In the 1970s, when we grew up, bikes were cool and so were the people who rode them, generally.  Now, any ignorant ass with an extra few thousand dollars and a fat wife has one parked in the yard.  It is like what George Carlin said about tattoos and ear rings…to paraphrase him, it was something like, “In the old days we had these things to piss off the squares; now, it is the squares who have them.”  This is especially true in the case of tattoos and Harleys.

     But we digress…the main point we would like to make is that, yes, oil is bad, mmkay?, but we need to use it wisely until we can transition to other energy sources.  The fact that the first ‘hybrid’ car was built in 1900 and the concept subsequently hidden for a hundred years shows how good we are at transition.  We are not.

     Who wants to try?

Bill Maher – ‘The Emperor’s New Ho’?

     Friends and critics, our last post took a swipe at television’s Craig Ferguson, host of the Late, Late Show on CBS. The slight was not intended toward Craigy but meant to point out how irresponsible CBS is in choosing sponsors. We at CFYSA admire Mr. Ferguson. He is an excellent author of film, novel and biography, a highly intelligent personage and a fun guy, as well. He may decry the use of illegal substances for himself but is still kind enough to do ‘tricks for stoners’ on Fridays nights, when they watch in ‘high’ concentration.

     God Bless You, Craigy, and all of your zany ways!

     This behaviour is in sharp contrast to the anaconda-like personage of Bill Maher, poster child for liberals worldwide. Maher used to be funny, up to date with contemporary society and a viable force in the last presidential election. Most young liberals who were on the Obama bandwagon laughed as Maher poked at George W. He made sense and he smoked pot.

     Fast-forward, not even two years…Obama is in office, due largely to votes gathered in colleges and other hotbeds of liberalism. Once the Saviour of America won the office, he decided to show his voters how interested he was in their lives and concerns. He opened up the White House computer bank to a ‘Town Hall Meeting’ of email questions. When more than 75% of the emails asked what he would do as regards legalization of marijuana, he laughed them off and suggested that the voters who sent them were ‘high’ and laughed off his largest core constituency, next to black voters. A lot of the black voters wanted legal pot, too.

     Following this debacle, a law was passed in Washington DC, allowing the use of medical marijuana for people who live in the District of Columbia. This accomplished, any senator, congressman, president, representative or lobbyist with a brick-and-mortar address in DC can feign a headache and get high grade marijuana whenever they have the urge. Not us.

     The majority of the remaining citizens of the USA cannot afford such medicine, even if we have cancer of MS. We are the poor schmucks who pay for the ticket so these left and right wing con artists can ride the reefer bus. This is where Bill Maher comes in.

     Maher has taken to criticizing the Obama administration, yet not with the zest with which he attacked W. Along with this, he has (or his writers, more like) fallen far out of touch with the american middle class, who he pretends to champion.

     Maher loves to talk about his ‘volcano,’ a marijuana-smoking device which vaporizes MJ so that it may be ingested without the danger of inhaling smoke. This piece of equipment costs more than most motor vehicles I, and many of my friends, ever owned. He jumps at the chance to note how expensive the weed he smokes is. He rubs it in our faces.

     It is amusing when he claims that his genetics and behaviour make him immune to diseases which plague many people and are simply unavoidable. He never gets a common cold, he claims. This is because he lives in a bubble and has no contact with people at large. No matter how healthy you are, if a person on a plane is sick with something that is contagious and they sneeze during flight, most people will catch the virus. Not our Bill, however. He claims it is because of his superiorly-expensive diet but we know it is because he has a private jet and all crew members wear rubber gloves, changing them for new pairs frequently. He IS a comedian and this stuff MIGHT be funny, if he were not dead serious.

     One of the swipes he took at Obama, after helping his campaign with sly jokes and witty rhetoric, concerned the stimulus checks of last winter. Laughing at how useless they were, he cited these $600 checks as not enough to buy a bag of pot with. In my case, $600 goes a long way in filling the oil tank and keeping my house warm so cats and kitties and myself live in comfort. I have to admit, it came in handy.

     Another thing that irks old Bill are those damned fatcats who selfishly hoard cash while we common folk strive to survive. Annoying him, too, are network broadcasters with opinions which differ from his. He mocks the easy lifestyle they lead on a network paycheck.

     HBO is the largest, richest, greediest, television franchise in the world. Maher has the catbird seat, commanding the primest of time available on the cable company. His pay surely triples that of most lowly network newpersons, dwarfing the compensation of these true journalists, and at the same time trivializing the importance of real news.

     Why learn about the real thing when it is more fun to hear Maher’s writer’s comic take on it? I am assuming that he has writers because, in the past, a lot of his jokes were funny, rather than pathetic. The new season starts soon. The network advertisements, alone,  for this lackluster foppery probably cost more than your parents made in their lifetimes…and so will residuals from rerunning it in other countries and formats.

     He is not your friend. He is a huckster who profits by running his mouth and depending on you to believe in his sincerity, like when he stares quietly into the camera at the end of each show and speaks softly, as if he is there in your livingroom with you. Except he would never come into YOUR livingroom. You are too fat and too germy for our Bill.

     While recoiling at the thought of a new season of this pap, one must admit that he does get some good guests who have good opinions. It is too bad that he overrides this windfall of intellect by talking over his learned guests. They are obviously imported from other news shows like Meet The Press, Face The Nation, The McLaughlin Group and others, in an effort to make Bill appear to be ‘in the know’.

     His time is as limited as his sensitivity to his core fans. He is as timely a comedian as Jimmy Durante, except Durante could sing, dance, joke – but above all he had ‘Class’.

     Craig Ferguson is another guy with Class. He should be on HBO and Maher should be relegated to following Jimmy Fallon at 3am on whatever channel takes him. Craig never talks down to his audience. He demeans himself, something Maher would never have the self-confidence to do. Craig can talk about philosophy, politics, masturbation, psychology, literature and sex, sex, sex, bringing it all together brilliantly. He is a gentleman. He makes us feel good.

    Bill has no Class. He is no gentleman. He sucks. Maybe this season he will have new writers and a better attitude toward us little people, as he and Obama regard us.

     Craig’s Late Late Show is on weeknights at 1237amEST, following David Letterman.

     He is a man of the people, as opposed to Maher’s take at being the whore of babble-on. Maher could have been an important force, as proven in 2007. Maher coulda been a contender. Now, he just sucks – on his pricey vaporizer.

Substance Abuse Sundae

    

     Gentle Readers, as tomorrow is the start of that horrible work week and we only have so many precious hours left, let us partake in a sundae, to slake our thirst and have a laugh.

     Sixteen ounces of Robitussin with two generous scoops of vanilla ice cream, topped with whipped cream and a cherry and served in a small vase is what we need today.

     Robo-tripping, as it is known, is more prevalent and hard to detect than you can imagine. Countless teenagers have committed horrific acts of violence against themselves and others. Statistically, robo is very high on the list of items which are shoplifted. The closest description to a ‘strong dose’ is the comparison with ketamine, a powerful animal tranquilizer which makes peace officers glad they have stun guns, even though they are often ineffective against such pesky restraints.

     Teenagers all over the country use the robo to concoct a true substance abuse ‘sundae,’ known as Agent Lemon. Agent lemon is a sweet little compound containing robo DMX (dextromethorphan – aww, a poor orphanned meth!) with alcohol, household bleach, lighter fluid and lemon juice or some other citric acid. Sounds yummy already, huh? The fun part is heating it on a stove or open flame to burn off ‘the solvent’ while you are trying to insert toothpicks in your eyelids to keep them open. The resulting house on fire or visit to the burn ward doesn’t seem to register and users just keep at it. Now this is not a good thing. I am glad there was plenty of LSD when I grew up!

     The resulting mixture is, as Krazy Kat once said, ‘a typhoon in a teapot.’

     Since this blog neither condones nor discourages behaviour of ANY type, much less self-abuse, allow me to say that this mixture is not for the weak at heart of the even-partially sane. The damage I have seen caused by this solution has caused decent, kind, fun, intelligent high school kids to become violent to the point of killing others and many other lesser social transgressions. Yet, marijuana and cannabis products remain the ‘assassin of youth’ and command the swirling void which is sucking up BILLIONS of dollars yearly in inept enforcement of unenforcable laws. Go Robo!!!!

     Television’s Craig Ferguson, a former substance abuser who documents his experiences in a recent biography cracks me up. Not just his jokes but the fact that he claims to have abused substances for ten whole years. That is a very short period of time and is used mostly for the material of jokes. What REALLY cracks me up is how he can go to a commercial from a sanctimonious discussion of how he has cleaned up his life and the commercial turns outs to be from his sponsor, Robitussin.

     The cheeky monkey man that is beloved by some for the homespun honesty with which he deals with his addiction is paid by Robitussin via CBS. His fault? Who is going to turn down a network talk slot over a moral issue? It could ruin a career! Sorry, Craigy, but remember that I am still a fan.

     Some people think substance abuse is not funny. Maybe they are hurting because they have a child with a problem. The underlying fact is that most substance abusers make the decisions they do thanks to the way they were raised. Inattentive parents who want to blame something besides themselves for what happened in Little Johnny’s formative years can look to the human genome and see that perhaps the trait of addiction is carried through families in a commonly-shared gene. If inattentive parents believe that evolution did not occur and that we are here as the Lord made us, they have only themselves to blame. It all happens in the brain. Most behaviour is learned. Guilt trips and fingerpointing are the coward’s way out. The coward is always unable to face the inevitable fact of their own involvement in bad habits picked up by children.

     Teach your children well. For all the time I have invested in substance abuse and all the downright, all-American fun I have with it, I would never even drink a beer in front of a child. A child should not see things like that. If they want to abuse substances, let them learn from mom and dad. I take no responsibility.

     So this did turn into a bit of a sundae. Sundaes often start out with a very distinct form and end up in a puddle of chocolate jimmies and goo (no sexual connotation intended) at the bottom of the dish.

     For those who look down on my Celebration of 50 Years of Substance Abuse, I enjoy hearing from you. Your sanctimonious doggerel is welcomed! You are kind, but nay, I am lost on an evil path to a downward spiral to a hell of my own making… At least I have been trying to since 1971 but I never seem to get there. I am too busy working or writing or doing volunteer work or helping others. I thought these drugs were supposed to make me unproductive and I really could use the rest, as I hate to be so busy! WTF?

     Hell is calling but I am late. It was so nice of God to create a Hell so that the beloved creatures he made in his own image could burn forever in tortuous pain! I sure the fuck would hate to miss that since he worked so hard at it. Maybe I am missing my chance because I am high….